The Rob Ford interview with Conrad Black

This is quite an interesting interview. Ford makes some good points in his favor. One of the interesting aspects that emerges is the sleazy stalking to which The Toronto Star's reporters, particularly Robyn Doolittle and Daniel Dale, have subjected him and his family.

The Rob Ford "death threat" video is obviously him joking about a celebrity boxing or wrestling match

Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury observed that Rob Ford sounded like he was doing a Hulk Hogan impersonation in the latest "scandal" released of the mayor after it was purchased by The Toronto Star for $5000.

That sounds pretty close. The video was made around the time of Ford's celebrity arm wrestling match with the famous pro wrestler.

In the video, you can clearly hear Toronto Mayor Rob Ford talk about being "in that ring" and when he talks about killing and only needing "15 minutes".

He also says if he wins, he'll "donate.." One of the other people in the room talks about how Ford's opponents "are pros."

Now under what circumstances other than a celebrity boxing match/fight does someone talk about donating???

It does sound a lot like it was in the spirit of his match with The Hulkster.

Ford admits being extremely inebriated when the video was made. But is it so terrible to get drink, in private, and joke around about what you'd do in a celebrity fight, and imitate the bluster of professional fighters?

This new "scandal" with which The Star is trying to outrage Toronto is no scandal.

But after they paid for this piece of nonsense it does firmly establish that The Toronto Star is a scandal rag with about as much credibility and integrity as The National Enquirer.

5 Beloved Celebrities Everyone Forgets Did Terrible Things

#1. Eric Clapton Is Incredibly Racist

In 1974, six years after Enoch was drummed out of political life by his remarks, a drunken Clapton was performing at a concert in Birmingham, and apparently saw an Arab man leering at his wife. This was too much for Clapton, who began a diatribe lambasting "wogs," "blacks," "Jamaicans," and anyone else who lived in England and wasn't white. 

Read the rest at CRACKED.COM

h/t Jon K.

More bad news for Ford Haters

Rob Ford was not the target in Project Traveller.

He wasn’t even a target.

The Toronto mayor is a footnote to this investigation from a police perspective.

Toronto Police launched the project about a year ago. The controversy involving Ford came much later.

Police listening in on wiretaps never heard Ford speak.

What they heard was people they were targeting talk about Ford.

While the city remains transfixed on the possibility police have recovered the video allegedly showing Ford smoking crack — which Ford has denied doing — Project Traveller started like any other for the Gun and Gang Task Force.

 It had nothing to do with Ford, but with combating drugs, guns and violence

Shannon Everett
via twitter

It looks like if Ford's enemies want to bring him down, they're going to have to find even crazier women to throw even bigger slushies at him.









Update: Toronto's "hated" mayor being swarmed by fans in the middle of hipster downtown Little Italy
(h/t The Hammer):

Rob Ford maintains his economic stewardship will ensure he survives scandal as Councilor Adam Vauhgan takes a taxpayer-funded jaunt to Vancouver

More here

The Toronto Star tries to spin poll that says half of Toronto thinks they're liars

A CTV/Ipsos Reid poll indicates that Torontonians are evenly divided as to whether the Rob Ford "crack video" exists.

The Toronto Star, whose vendetta against Rob Ford began the day he declared his candidacy for mayor, has managed to put a spin on it that further undermines their crumbling credibility.

The Toronto Star's spin

Their headline for the story proclaims: "Rob Ford crack scandal: More than half of Toronto residents believe Ford video exists, poll finds "

What they leave out is that with the poll finding 51% who believe it versus the 49% who do not, accounting for margins of error, there's effectively a split down the middle. The CTV story notes that, saying "Torontonians evenly split in their belief of Rob Ford crack allegations" while The Star tries to fudge their facts.

Worse for The Toronto Star, it means that the fact that half of Toronto does not believe the video exists, by extension, means that half the city believes Toronto Star journalists are liars.

The obsessive hysteria with which The Toronto Star has incessantly harangued Rob Ford is claiming victims. But those victims include The Star itself. Its own credibility annihilated, their efforts are backfiring.

based on this CTV item

The outcry they are trying to stir up is showing itself to be a manufactured fizzle. The major damage The Toronto Star has managed to inflict is to the state of journalism in Toronto rather than to the city's resilient mayor.

Even the hack journalists at the Toronto Star are beginning to concede they may have to deal with Rob Ford for a long time.

A Toronto Star article today by one of the viewers of the alleged "crack video":

“His support is rock solid. He’s absolutely rock solid,” said Bruce Davis. “He’ll be very strong going into the election… The people who hated him before still hate him. The people who love him still love him. I haven’t met a single person who has changed their mind (because of the latest controversy).”

Davis says back in 2010, the Smitherman campaign did focus group testing where they asked voters about previous Ford controversies and political gaffes.

“One woman said – and I’m not suggesting he does this, but this is what she said — ‘If I have to choose between someone who wastes our money and someone who (breaks the law), I’ll choose the person who (breaks the law.)’”

Now, poll results released Saturday would only appear to back Davis’s view to a point.

The Ipsos Reid survey found that 34 per cent of Torontonians said they’d vote to re-elect Ford if an election were held tomorrow.

The Toronto Star, being The Toronto Star, had to include a few smears of Rob Ford in the process.

But notice how, in true al Starzeera fashion, the people they quote supporting Ford are named and on-the-record, while the ones they use to smear him are their usual anonymous, unnamed sources.

I wonder if  those unnamed sources are actually Star Editors?

h/t BCF

Toronto Star Editor tries his hand at comedy

"Mr. Ford, your accusation of a vendetta [by The Toronto Star against you]  is, to use your word, ridiculous. "

They've stalked him at his home and cottage and libeled him by making false allegations of him assaulting a high school football player, which the student himself refuted but the Star never retracted. They had columnists claiming Toronto's voters are "crazy" and an uncivilized horde for voting Rob Ford into office. Every petty lapse by the mayor is treated like a war crime. But vendetta..??

Naww..of course not.


Plus... The Toronto Star essentially admits Ford's opponents are douche bags:

"To other tribes of Toronto — the bourgeois bohemians of Riverdale sauntering past sunny Carrot Common, the Lululemoned pram-pushers of Bloor West village, the discerning North Toronto patrons of Pusateri’s — this mayor and his supporting army of strangers from a strange land is mystifying, maddening . . . and more than enough to ruin even the most virtuous yoga high."

Hudak says Wynne's Liberal government "has crossed the line into corruption"

Another anti-Gay Republican legislator caught in a Gay sex scandal

This sort of thing seems to be a monthly occurrence..

Here’s how it reportedly went down: 64-year-old, married Indiana state representative, Phillip “Phil” Hinkle — who voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage — allegedly tried to procure an 18-year old male prostitute named Kameryn Gibson on the “men seeking men” section of Craigslist and then offered the young lad $80 plus tip for a “good time” Saturday night at the JW Marriott hotel.

Once at the hotel, Hinkle, in perhaps not the brightest move, reportedly showed his official ID to the male prostitute. Shortly thereafter Gibson, whose ad said he was seeing a “sugga daddy,” had a change of heart and called his sister, Megan, from the hotel suite’s bathroom to come and pick him up. That’s when Hinkle allegedly tried to prevent Gibson from leaving.

Now here’s where it gets really weird. Gibson claims the lawmaker then grabbed him in the buttocks, exposed himself and later offered him a bribe of an iPad, BlackBerry and $100 cash to keep quiet.

More from the Indy Star, including details of the email exchange between the male prostitute and the state legislator

Weiner held in contempt by constituents

Constituents in his New York 9th Congresional District rally against sexting scandal Congressman Anthony Weiner following release of more lurid photos of the House member grabbing his member in the House gym.

Jack Layton keeps digging a hole with his tongue

The location of Layton's "shiatsu" 

"It didn't look sketchy to me at all, or else I wouldn't have gone in"

That's what NDP leader Jack Layton had to say about the Velvet Touch rub-and-tug Massage Parlour he paid his now infamous visit to back in 1996.

The "Masturgate" issue for Layton, as far as I'm concerned, is not about whether or not Layton was manually or orally pleasured in a bawdy house 15 years ago. If he was, I don't care. I'd make fun about him for it becoming public fodder, but I do not believe that it should disqualify someone from being Prime Minister of Canada. If every sexual peccadillo were grounds to eliminate someone from the political sphere, we'd be left with a very sorry offering of leaders (maybe that explains the current state of politics in this country).

Layton's handling of the matter, now that it's become news, is the issue. It gives us some insight into how a Prime Minister Layton would deal with a crisis, and that picture isn't nearly as pretty as an Asian erotic masseuse.

What have we learned about Layton from all of this:

1. Collapses under pressure

A smart leader would have said, "I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't commit a crime nor was I ever charged with one. This is just desperation on the part of my opponents, and you can tell how desperate they are. I'm not going to talk about this anymore; I'm sticking to the real issues of the election." and left it at that. He should have refused to say anything more about it. Instead, he panics, and keeps blathering idiotic, unlikely nonsense that makes him look foolish at best and guilty and foolish at worst.

If Layton crumbles like this when dealing with a minor public relations blip, what kind of ineptitude could we expect from him in the face of a real crisis were he to be Prime Minister? The result could be catastrophic.

2 Can't keep his mouth shut

There's a time to talk and a time to shut up.

Though Layton is not a religious man, he would have done well to have listened to the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 18, Verse 28:

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise, and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

Invariably, politicians get in trouble for what they do say, not for what they don't say. Layton doesn't have the basic wisdom or understanding of that simple rule, which does not suggest he will make a good leader.

At the time of the incident, Layton was a long-serving downtown Toronto councillor. He claims he didn't see anything sketchy about the Velvet Touch Massage Parlour, which Layton now refers to as a "community clinic" on the second floor of a shady facade of a seedy area in Toronto's Chinatown. According to reports, the place has a coded red light/green light system to indicate when police were coming up the stairs.  For his "therapeutic massage" Mr. Layton was found totally nude by police.

Layton's answers raise more questions about his competence and judgement than staying silent would have.

3. Layton is incapable of not making himself look like an idiot over a minor matter

Mr. Layton is a very intelligent individual, who had lived in the downtown core for a long time. If he is telling the truth, Layton is saying that he lacked the savvy that just about every other resident of downtown Toronto has.

What is Layton's spin? That he's the kind of guy who couldn't even get laid in a whorehouse? It's doubtful that would be a particularly encouraging message to voters doubtful about whether he would be a strong Prime Minister.

Frankly, I'd rather have a Prime Minister who isn't stupid and got a hand job than one who is stupid and didn't. In either case, Mr. Layton has babbled himself into a position where he would have us believe he was stupid. That's not how a competent leader does things.

----

One sign of the times is the CBC radio news report I heard this morning. Usually, they try to picture Stephen Harper in the worst possible light, while portraying Layton as a leader. They must have had a whiff of the way the winds are blowing, because this morning the report had Harper sounding Prime Ministerial with a report about how Liberals who want sound economic policies will find the Conservatives the best choice this election. The report about Layton was all about the (alleged) hand job.

If you're a socialist that the CBC has bailed on, you've got to know you're in trouble.

UPDATE: Just in - The Toronto Star shows a poll that says Tories may be headed for a majority. And as will come as a surprise to no one, the NDP has the least committed voters.